The Observer has
an interview with Jarvis Cocker, in which he talks about his plans for the Meltdown festival he's curating,
Pulp, his Darren Spooner alter-ego, and living in Paris whilst not speaking French, among other things:
This is the terrible irony of Jarvis's life: having longed for fame ever since he was a child - 'It's the classic way of getting over your social ineptitude: you think if you're a star, people will come and talk to you' - and having waited an incredibly long time for it, until 'Common People' in 1995, he found when it arrived he didn't like it at all. He didn't like being recognised in the street or being pointed out at parties - he wanted to be the observer, not the observed - and he could only cope by getting drunk. Whereas Paris is fine: nobody recognises him at all. 'If I went and stood in the indie section of the Virgin megastore,' he muses, 'maybe someone would come along and say, "Ooh, look, it's Jarvis!" If I was really desperate one day and needed to reassure myself that people still knew who I was, I could do that. But that would be a bit sad, wouldn't it?'